This document summarizes Dr. Janice K. Jones' experience creating an open textbook project at the University of Southern Queensland. It describes how the initial plan was to create an open WordPress site with open educational resources for teaching the arts. However, the site was hacked, forcing Dr. Jones to rethink the project. She transformed it into a blog site called ArtsSpace that shares artistic works and stories beyond traditional textbooks. The project aims to disrupt boundaries and start conversations around arts education. Overall, the document outlines the challenges and transformations in Dr. Jones' process of developing this open educational resource.

1. Creative Destruction:
An ‘Open Textbook’ disrupting personal and
institutional praxis
Dr Janice K Jones
School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist
Education, University of Southern Queensland,
Australia

2. Acknowledgement of Country
I acknowledge the traditional
custodians of the lands where
my teaching and research are
conducted: the Gaibal,
Jarowair, Ugarapul and
Butchulla peoples of
Queensland. I honour the
wisdom of Elders past, present
and future, seeking to walk
together in the spirit of
reconciliation
Image: Jada DENNISON/Untitled/2015/acrylic
monoprint/60 x 42 cm

3. Outline
 About the university - snapshot of a Regional
Australian University
 Its adoption of Open Approaches
 Current working practices – tensions between thinking
and practices
 About the ‘Open Textbook’ project
 A Textbook? Why?
 The proposal…
 The challenge – thinking – professional and personal
habitus, and institutional expectations
 What do we learn?

4. Snapshot: University of Southern
Queensland
Regional university
3 campuses
Excellent reputation: distance
education- ‘print based’
delivery discontinued.
14 years online/blended
delivery
Teacher Education programs
fully online with flexible study
blended delivery
The University of Southern
Queensland Annual Report 2015
(p.85)
Staff:
Academic: 768
Professional: 1021
Students (headcount):
Domestic 23798
International 4405
Undergraduate (load) 11519
Postgraduate (load) 3207
The University of Southern Queensland Annual
Report 2015 (p.85)

5. University History - Open Approaches
 2007:10 courses via
MIT Open
Courseware
consortium (OEC)
 Founder member,
Open Educational
Resources universitas
(OERu)
 Currently:
 Open access to
research (e-prints)
 Open-licensed
images, videos,
textbooks, journal
articles, music and
data sets for learning
and assessment

6. Pre -1998 – Early adoption - vision
 Blackboard, WebCT,
traditional didactic use of
LMS as ‘classroom’
 Book-like course content
- introduction,
assessment, modules
 Discussion forums,
recorded lectures (sage
on the stage
 Beyond the PDF – a
move to web-based
content
 Intent: Metadata will
allow user-selected
‘smart’ content for
‘on the fly’ and
tailored learning
environments
 Use of a content
object repository to
allow repurposing

7. Technology ubiquity vs integration
 ‘In the wild’:
 Smartphone
 Social/integrating
 Health
 Travel
 Learning, verifying
 Planning/selecting
 Buying/Booking
 Corporate R&D
 In the university:
 Moodle platform
 Mahara e-portfolio
 Legacy systems
 Peoplesoft – CMS
 Sustainable, robust,
scalable, secure
 Economically viable
 Constraining

8. So what is possible with such tools?
 How do we move
beyond the limits of
our imagination and
habitus
 How can educators
and learners use
these tools to create
rich learning?

9. 2016 Courses and Pedagogies
 PDF core content
 Recorded lectures
 Virtual classrooms
 Discussion forums
 Quizzes
 Exams
 Group assignments
and discussions
 All about ‘You’….?

11. ‘Open Textbook’ Grants 2015 – 2016
 March: Competitive 2015 Excellence in Learning and Teaching
Grant $15K
 To explore ways to create and share open content
 To provide recommendations to the university for
mainstreaming open textbook authoring
 Guidance and support for early adopters
 Expert panel of judges give feedback (August/September)
 Janice Jones, David Jones, Eric Kong, Kate Judith (with a
team of 8 from Open Access College)
 A ‘showcase’ of achievements – December 2015
 Final report end January 2016
 Reviewer feedback – April 2016

12. Horseless Carriage Thinking
 Most use of OEP is designed not to “disrupt the
smooth running routines” (Bigum, 2012, p. 35) of
existing educational practices and institutions.
Open textbooks are still textbooks. Open courses
are still courses. David Jones (Blog) March 2016,
 Our thinking is framed by habitus – professional
and personal culture and experience
 Hence – we ‘read’ possibilities and innovations in
terms of the known and familiar
 So…an ‘open textbook’??

13. My story – The Academic
 This is my story – experience and learning in creating
an ‘Open Book’
 I had not expected this to be such a difficult but
transformative experience
 I had not expected my experience to highlight the need
for institutional learning
 Nor that it would spotlight the kinds of systems and
supports that will be needed as universities shift from a
‘one size’ paradigm to embrace new ways of open
working – Not just OER’s but Open Education Practices

14. Drivers and Discourses of ‘Openness’
 Institutional:
 Competition
 ‘Reach’ into untapped
markets
 Social justice agendas
(and funding)
 Economies of scale
 Reduced cost for
students
 Scholarly:
 Innovation – rewards
– reputation,
standing, funding
 Space for individual
and creative praxis
 Testing boundaries
 Cross/institutional
sharing

15. The Australian Curriculum for the Arts
 …all young Australians are entitled to engage with the
five Arts subjects and should be given an opportunity to
experience the special knowledge and skills base of
each.
 All students study dance, drama, media arts, music and
visual arts — from Foundation to the end of primary
school. Schools will be best placed to determine how
this will occur.
 Lower secondary ‘experience some’ subjects in more
depth. Upper years students specialise in one or more
Arts subject(s) as part of their overall studies

16. The arts are…
 …foundational to historical, social, cultural and aesthetic
understandings and appreciation.
 …a vital means of human expression, inquiry and
meaning-making.
 …a way to self understanding, aesthetic awareness, and
sensitivity to other ways of seeing the world
 To effectively engage diverse learners teachers must
develop curriculum knowledge, skills, pedagogies and
practices.
BUT….

17. Lines, boxes, borders, boundaries
 When pre-service educators begin their undergraduate
programs to become teachers, most have had minimal
experience of the arts since primary school.
 My research data captured over 3 years with future
primary school educators confirms the majority are
fearful of teaching the arts and most doubt their own
creativity.
 All want to know how to ‘tick the right box’ to get a HD

18. Limits to my/our thinking

19. The challenge – supporting learning
 Primary: A single 10
week course with 2
week practicum –
students’ sole
experience of Drama,
Dance, Media, Music,
Visual Arts
 Fully online
 Secondary/MOLT:
Single course to cater
for specialist teachers
years 7– 12
 Lower school – 5 arts
areas
 Upper school – art
subject specialist
 Fully online

20. In the beginning…
 A wordpress site with
OER resources for the
arts
 An emphasis upon
providing culturally
varied arts examples
 Invitations sent to
colleagues world wide
 Students curated CC
BY SA resources
 Created their own
websites for the arts
(assessment task)
 Resources were peer
reviewed/enhanced
to provide useful arts
content for teaching

21. Considerations – Quality and ‘Openness’
 Artists’ reluctance to
share original works
 Creating a website
was not an issue but
securing it was
 Spam became a
problem
 Student curated sites
had value but were
uninspiring
 All included useful CC
By SA resources
 But content lacked
connecting
meaning/cultural or
connecting narratives

22. Gales of Creative Destruction: August

23. The ‘Dance’ - Shiva: Creator/Destroyer
 When things go wrong, when products break – this is a
learning opportunity…
 My website was hacked by ‘Hard Hitter’
 ICT could not help – this was not a university computer.
The WordPress site was not a university site.
 Expert friends could not help. Keychain made it
impossible to open up any programs or to do any work
 Necessitated full re-install of the OS on my Macbook Air
and re-purchase of MS Office
 Apple back up technicians neglected one important
stage in walking me through re-install: settings and
programs were lost…

24. Sleepless nights = new thinking

25. Mid point review…Beyond the ‘Book’?
 With all content lost I sought quick solutions. The panel
advised against creating a WikiBook
 This forced me back to my earlier thinking but from a
new angle
 Akash Odedra is a dancer who has struggled to express
ideas through the written word: In Murmur he
repositions the centuries old dance vocabulary of the
Kathak dance tradition in a modern and digital
performance context.
 Dance is another language: Odedra re-casts dyslexia –
not as a failure to follow rules - but as a new language
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T49IjKho5y8
 Metaphor – ‘beyond the book’ - from 5’.45”

26. The OER project transformed –
 Why a book? Why
‘deliver’ Arts
Curriculum content?
 Disrupt boundaries
 Start from ancient
myths, mysteries,
narratives, difference
voices, ways of
seeing, disonnances
http://janicekjones.com
 A blogsite, pinterest,
site stimulus for work
by/with pre-service
teachers
 Linked Facebook site
for artists
 Starting from the
earth, the elements,
Indigenous peoples,
stories, mysteries

27. The flow…
http://janicekjones.com/

28. The site: ArtsSpace
http://janicekjones.com/

29. Where next?
 Continue to build the
site
 Engage local artists
and societies to share
and use works – value
add
 Grow Facebook,
Twitter, and Pinterest
‘flow’
 Art exhibition linked to
site in 2016
 Possible link to USQ
Makerspace – sharing
of knowledge, skills,
videos
 Encourage sharing of
creative writing and
arts products and
research– from USQ
education courses
 Encourage use by
schools

30. Discussion….

31. References
Jones, D.T. (Blog, 2016, March) OEP and Initial Teacher Education: Moving on from
the horsey, horseless carriage.
https://davidtjones.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/oep-and-initial-teacher-education-
moving-on-from-the-horsey-horseless-carriage/
Odedra A. (2014).Murmur, TedGlobal.
https://www.ted.com/talks/aakash_odedra_a_dance_in_a_hurricane_of_paper_wind_
and_light?language=en
Images:
Fire close up texture by Titus Tscharntke (ND)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire_close_up_texture.jpg#/medi
a/File:Fire_close_up_texture.jpg
Shiva Nataragja by Vassil (2007)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShiva_Nataraja_Mus
%C3%A9e_Guimet_25971.jpg